'The Mandalorian' composer says there's a hidden detail in the show's score that includes sounds from the set

• The first season of Disney Plus' first live-action "Star Wars" series, "The Mandalorian" is nominated for several Emmys this year.
• Insider spoke with composer Ludwig Göransson, nominated for best original score, about how he crafted the unique soundtrack of "The Mandalorian."
• He started with the recorder because that was one of the first instruments he ever learned to play as a child.
• Göransson also recorded sounds from the real set, like the clink of Mandalorian's boot spurs, and incorporated those into the music.

Oscar and Grammy-winning composer Ludwig Göransson ("Creed," "Black Panther") is now up for his first Emmy award following his work on the instantly iconic score for "The Mandalorian," Disney Plus' first live-action "Star Wars" series.

Göransson was brought onto "The Mandalorian" team early in the process when cocreators Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni had the scripts written and concept art prepared. After seeing a glimpse of the visual world, and reading through the first season's storylines, Göransson got to work.

"I wanted to connect with the feeling I had as a kid when I watched 'Star Wars' for the first time," Göransson told Insider in a recent interview. "And I think the only way to come back to that feeling was to step away from the computer and just fill up my studio with real instruments like guitars, the piano, drums, '70s synthesizers, and instruments that I could touch."

One of the first instruments he turned to was the recorder. Göransson picked that particular instrument because it was one of the first things he had learned to play at the early age of 6 or 7.

It was the beginning of his emotional return to childhood, part of the way he would recreate the sensation he'd had listening to John Williams' indelible "Star Wars" score when he was a kid.

Insider spoke with Göransson about creating "The Mandalorian" score, including how he recorded the sounds of the bounty hunter's boot spurs on set, and why his feelings about the Child (aka Baby Yoda) changed once his first son was born.

Why the now-iconic 'Mandalorian' melody represents an emotional return to childhood

"I spent a lot of time thinking about the emotions and feelings I had as a child watching ['Star Wars'] and hearing the music for the first time," Göransson said. "When I closed my eyes and heard the music, it literally took me to space. It took me to the planets. I wanted to recreate that feeling in my own way, but then obviously keep the soul of 'Star Wars.'"

Göransson wanted to start with physical instruments in his studio, away from the digital tools on his computer. In addition to using his guitars, piano, and drums, Göransson also ordered a set of five different recorders.

"The one recorder that really grabbed onto me was the bass recorder," Göransson said. "I'd never played it before, and that instrument was just so beautiful. I locked myself into the studio with all these instruments that I could touch and play and just started writing songs — the way I did when I was about 9 or 10 years old."

"I'm not a great recorder player," Göransson said through laughter. "So I think I spent like 10 hours in one day just playing different melodies on the recorder and seeing what I could do. And somehow that melody kept coming back to me."

That melody he's referring to is of course the opening notes of the title track: "The Mandalorian."

"In the beginning, I thought 'well, this is too simple,' but as I started writing the song and adding more instruments on, it just kept coming back to me. I wanted 'The Mandalorian' to have a sound that was just immediate when you heard one or two notes. So off the bat, you get a certain feeling, you get an emotional reaction, and you feel intimacy with this character."

'The Child,' known now as Baby Yoda, resonated differently with Göransson after his first baby was born

Göransson started working on "The Mandalorian" about six months before his first child was born. While pregnant with their son, Göransson's wife was the concertmaster (the leader of the violin section) in the orchestra for "The Mandalorian."

"It's funny because she was pregnant during every recording session," Göransson said. "So he grew up in utero with 'The Mandalorian' music constantly playing for him."

The core storyline of "The Mandalorian" centers on the bounty hunter's discovery and protection of a small baby — the same species as Yoda. Though the Disney Plus show refers to this baby as "the Child," fans have taken to calling it "Baby Yoda."

"Obviously I loved the Child from the very beginning when I first saw it," Göransson said. "But after my first child was born my perception of the Child completely changed. I was just struck by how incredibly childlike it was."

"It was actually just like my baby," Göransson said, laughing.

Having a child of his own made Göransson better understand why he had been connecting so much with the little Baby Yoda character.

"Jon [Favreau] has kids himself, so he really understood what a real baby looks like and he could emulate that feeling and impressions in the way your baby moves his head and how it sounds in this little character," Göransson said. "That was a really fun discovery for me."

The sound of the Mandalorian's boot spurs were recorded on set and incorporated into the score

"With every project I work on, it's all about creating a unique sound world and sound palette," Göransson said, adding, "And a lot of time, the way I do that is to take real sounds from whatever movie or project I'm working on and make it into musical elements."

While working on the movie "Creed," this meant recording sounds from a Philadelphia boxing gym. And before that, for "Fruitvale Station," he visited a BART train station in Oakland, California.

So what real sound made its way into "The Mandalorian" score?

For that, Göransson said he recorded the sound the eponymous bounty hunter's boot spurs made while he walked. Göransson said you can hear these metallic sounds throughout "The Mandalorian" score, but in particular on the track "Face to Face."

What to expect from season 2, which Göransson is working on right now

When we spoke in the second-to-last week of August, Göransson was hard at work on the score for the upcoming second season of "The Mandalorian." As production designer Andrew L. Jones told Insider, the crew had managed to finish filming all of season two just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down many TV productions.

This means fans will get to see "The Mandalorian" season two on the expected schedule, sometime this fall.

For Göransson, COVID-19 has meant that the post-production process and music writing had to be done from his own studio, without the previous occasional in-person meeting with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. Now all those meetings were done over video chat instead.

As for the recorded music itself, Göransson says they just recently began recording the orchestral sections at a sound stage with new safety precautions in place.

"We're recording the orchestra in a different way," Göransson said. "We have to record strings separately, and brass separately, and woodwinds separately. We can't do them all together. We can't have as many people in the room, but I think for the sound we're going for this season it actually works out."

"One of the things that was so fun about season one is that every episode almost feels like its own movie," Göransson said. "Obviously it's still connected story-wise, but every episode has its own unique touch to it. And continuing into season two, I'm just having so much fun with each episode and being able to give a new theme for each one."

You can watch the upcoming Emmy Awards on September 20 on ABC, and "The Mandalorian" season two on Disney Plus this fall.

"The Mandalorian" is now available to stream on Disney Plus. The service costs $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, and you can sign up here. (When you subscribe to a service through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners.)

• Read more:
• 'The Mandalorian' recreated a tiny detail from the original 'Star Wars' trilogy that fans might have missed
• 17 behind-the-scenes facts you might not have known about the making of 'The Mandalorian'
• 27 perfect tweets about the newest episode of 'The Mandalorian' that show people are still enraptured by the adventures of 'Baby Yoda'